ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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After a forty-year career, Thomas “Tom” Hutton retired in 2021 as Vice President of a Washington area consulting firm supporting national security and crisis contingency programs for all three branches of the federal government, state and local government, and major corporations in high-risk industries. He grew up in Michigan and attended high school at Culver Military Academy in Indiana.

In 1972, Tom was enticed to leave his close-knit Midwestern family to attend American University in Washington D.C. after growing up following the television drama of Inspector Louis Erskine, Hollywood’s notion of an FBI agent. Ironically, after becoming ensconced in campus life, an off-chance acquaintance led to a part-time job in the White House and an eventual real-life espionage drama of his own.

Tom wrote An Unlikely Asset inspired by his experience beginning as an eighteen-year-old college freshman working as a messenger in the White House where he was sent on missions to deliver “red tag” designated messages to signify importance. Whether it was the CIA, Capitol Hill or foreign embassies, the procedure was the same. He travelled in chauffer- driven limousines and had unimpeded accessibility to Washington’s most influential places.

This eventually led to a position in the Situation Room, often described as the most Top Secret room in the nation. Later, his own life took an unlikely turn when he was approached by a foreign spy.

An Unlikely Asset is not a “tell all” book of an insider. It is a novel about a young man, Matt Thomas, as he struggles to maintain a normal existence, weaving back and forth between The White House, life as a spy, his fraternity brothers, and college life while witnessing first hand one of the most turbulent times in American history, the Watergate scandal, leading to the first resignation of a President and the social upheaval of the Vietnam War. It is an implausible story that could only happen in America.